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IJ Forums turns spotlight on charter schools

Initially, our intention with this IJ Forums session was to sit down with a proponent and opponent of the Ross Valley Charter School and get a better sense of what their differences are — and maybe even find some common ground.

That was not to be. Although Sharon Sagar, one of the charter school organizers,

agreed to appear on our show, neither an opponent from STAND — which is leading opposition to the charter, even though it has already been approved — nor a representative of the Ross Valley School District would appear on camera.

A STAND spokeswoman said the group didn’t like the IJ’s coverage and/or editorials on the topic; Superintendent Rick Bagley said he preferred to move on.

Rather than shy away from the topic of charters, we sat down with Marin County Superintendent of Schools Mary Jane Burke, as well as Sagar and Greg Knell, a San Rafael schools trustee who opposed the Ipso proposal.

The situations are different in each district, but some of the key issues are the same: many people are concerned about the financial impact of charters on public funding of traditional public schools, and how that affects the quality of public education.

“The bottom line is charter schools are public schools,” Burke told host Dick Spotswood in the session. ”Every time a charter school has come forward in our community, there’s always an awkward and challenging time.

“I think ultimately as a community our collective responsibility is to know that people have different views. … We have a responsibility to be sure that as we’re agreeing or disagreeing around what’s the best for our kids, that we have to do that in a way that’s civil, respectful, and remind ourselves that our kids are watching how we’re dealing with disagreements. It’s a challenge.”

Today there are some 950 charter schools in the state attended by more than 500,000 students, or about 9 percent of the student population, she said. But in Marin there are only a handful of charters that account for 1.6 percent of the student population.

The newest, set to open this fall, is the Ross Valley Charter.

“I think the debate is really about whether there should be choices within the public school system and whether a charter school is the way to provide that choice,” Sagar said. “So there are people who feel like … all students should be having the same type of program and there are others who feel that students benefit from having options within the public school system.”

She said she believes “there is some miscommunication out in the community about whether charter schools are public schools. There are signs all over our community that says ‘go public, not charter,’ so that right there is communicating to the public something very different than what actually exists, which is that … charter schools are public schools.”

Knell noted that the Ipso proposal in San Rafael — subsequently withdrawn — was different, “because there were no San Rafael parents, students, teachers involved in the charter movement. This was a commercial charter coming in from the Silicon Valley and they wanted one-fourth of our school district just to be handed to them. Their program was very boilerplate; most charter petitions now are boilerplate. … Primarily, I believe, not just in our district but throughout Marin, we have the magnet school model which is really working; we’ve adopted Common Core, we’re doing project-based education — charters are trying to bring project-based education to us and we’re five years ahead.”

Watch the full show online at marinij.com/topic/ij-forums or on Comcast Channel 26 and AT&T U-verse Channel 99 at 6:30 p.m. May 18, 5 p.m. May 20, 6:30 p.m. June 1 or 5 p.m. June 3.

“The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”–Thomas Jefferson